Infamous Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger may have been photographed in Sicily after 10 years on the run. Bulger was the model for the villain in last year’s Academy Award-winning movie “The Departed.”
The FBI released photos of the man they believe to be Bulger, now 77, and a woman whom they believe to be Bulger’s girlfriend Catherine Grieg, 56. They were window shopping in the Sicilian town of Taormina.
The pictures and video were taken by a vacationing DEA agent who thought he recognized the fugitive mobster. Facial recognition software could not definitively confirm that the man in the pictures as Bulger. The FBI is asking for help from anyone who was visiting the Taormina area in the spring.
One incentive for coming forward is the $1 million reward for information leading to his apprehension.
Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr is one of the world’s leading authorities on the mobster. He has viewed the tape and has concluded that it is a film of Bulger. He said he bases that conclusion on a “certain menace to his gait.” Bulger allegedly once tried to have car killed.
Carr, author of “The Brothers Bulger” told the New York Daily News that Bulger has pulled a Michael Corleone, just like in ‘The Godfather.’”
Bulger, the former leader of South Boston’s ultra-violent Winter Hill Gang, is charged with 19 murders and suspected in many more.
He fled the country in 1995.